Archive for the Offense Category

Welcome to Orioles Opening Day 2016! For the third year in a row I will attempt to live blog the Orioles first game of the season. If it’s anything like the other years, I’m sure that I’ll start out strong and fade quickly in both jokes and content. Enjoy the game!

Last Friday Matt Wieters surprised many by accepting the qualifying offer the Orioles made him. As a result, he will now be a member of the 2016 Orioles on a one year, $15.8 million contract. That’s not a small amount of money, but it’s surprising he accepted the deal, considering there are no other catchers on the free agent market, leading one to believe that Wieters would have been in line for a large payday had he rejected the qualifying offer. Either he found that the offers he would’ve received were lower than expected, thought he could make even more money on the free agent market after the 2016 season, enjoyed playing in Baltimore (the only organization he’s ever known), or a combination of all three.

The situation of Wieters accepting the qualifying offer has already been covered in excellent fashion (as usual) over at Camden Depot. On Monday, Jon Shepherd provided a very thorough and realistic set of options as to where the Orioles offseason may go as a result of this, while Tuesday saw Matt Perez laid out some reasons (in much more depth than what I have above) as to why Wieters may have accepted the qualifying offer. Since the situation has already been covered so well, I won’t be going over any of that in this piece and I suggest that you head over to Camden Depot and read the articles in their entirety.

If you read Camden Depot on even a semi-regular basis, you already know that the writers recently participated in an exercise outlining their individual plans as to how they thought the Orioles should approach the offseason, with Jon picking what he ultimately thought would be the best course of action. An index of the entire series can be found HERE. What I would like to do is take another look at my personal blueprint for the Orioles 2016 season, and see how Matt Wieters accepting the qualifying offer (which I did offer him in my hypothetical offseason) changes my strategy going forward.

My blueprint can be found HERE (it focused on building major league depth and a minor league system), but below is a quick recap of the free agent signings I would have made.

LHP J.A. Happ – 3 years, $24 million ($8 million annually, 3rd year an option)

OF Denard Span – 4 years, $56 million ($14 million annually, 4th year an option)

The original assumption was that after paying players currently on the roster, providing raises in arbitration (using the numbers provided at MLB Trade Rumors), and paying league minimum to players who have not accrued enough service time, I would have approximately $44.7 million to spend on free agents. Now that Wieters has accepted the qualifying offer I extended him, that number has decreased to $28.9 million. Let’s see what adjustments can be made while following the same set of rules (which includes NO trades). Continue reading →

Over the course of this week and next, the writers of ESPN Sweetspot Network Orioles blog Camden Depot have been putting forth their plans on how they would construct the 2016 Orioles given a budget of $120 million. After everyone has given their thoughts, editor and founder Jon Shepherd will decide which direction to take (or which combination of directions to take). The first two options have been posted earlier this week and I’m up next. My strategy involves building depth at the major league level by adding free agents who aren’t tied to draft pick compensation. This allows the Orioles to keep their picks and add additional draft selections through the loss of their own free agents.

This post is a little bit late, but the Orioles were busy during the hours leading up to the trade deadline. They ended up swinging deals for Gerardo Parra of the Brewers and Junior Lake of the Cubs. I wrote about the latter for ESPN Sweetspot Orioles blog Camden Depot.

I’ve been on hiatus for some time now, but I’m back in the blogging game just in time for the 2015 trade deadline. The Orioles corner outfielders have been terrible this year, so it’s no surprise that they would be looking for an upgrade in left or right field before the trade deadline. Today at ESPN Sweetspot Network Orioles blog Camden Depot, I explain why I think the Phillies’ Ben Revere would be a good (if unexciting) target for Baltimore.

The Orioles have had a roughly average offense so far in 2015, but they are getting very little production from their corner outfielders. Today at ESPN Sweespot Network Orioles blog Camden Depot, I take a look at what they have in their minor league outfields and why there isn’t anyone who will be able to come up and help out in the major leagues.